The Gendered ‘I’ in Ancient Literature PDF Download

Author: Kirsty Corrigan
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443851094
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
The infamous and formidable mythological figure of Medea has deservedly held an enduring appeal throughout the ages. This has perhaps never been more true than in the Silver Age of Latin literature, when the taste for rhetorical excess and the macabre made the heroine, and especially her notorious acts of witchcraft and the slaughter of her own children in revenge for her husband’s infidelity, a particularly suitable and attractive topic for literary treatment. By examining the portrayal of this remarkable figure in the works of Ovid, Seneca and Valerius Flaccus, Virgo to Virago: Medea in the Silver Age offers a comprehensive study of the representation of the heroine, not only in this specific period, but in the entire Roman era, since these three authors provide the only substantial accounts of this figure to have survived in Classical Latin. Through close analysis of the texts, Virgo to Virago explores the characterisation of Medea, whose mythical life was inevitably overshadowed by her legendary behaviour, considering whether these accounts merely accord with the particular traits of the Silver Age, or whether this mighty female character has any claim to sympathy or admiration in these texts. The book simultaneously examines how the Latin authors compare with, and differ from, both one another and their extant Greek and Roman predecessors, concluding with a discussion of the significance of any comparisons to be drawn between these portrayals of the Roman Medea.

Author: Lisa Cordes
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110795256
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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Book Description
Considering the ubiquity of rhetorical training in antiquity, the volume starts from the premise that every first-person statement in ancient literature is in some way rhetorically modelled and aesthetically shaped. Focusing on different types of Greek and Latin literature, poetry and prose, from the Archaic Age to Late Antiquity, the contributions analyse the use and modelling of gender-specific elements in different types of first-person speech, be it that the speaker is (represented as) the author of a work, be it that they feature as characters in the work, narrating their own story or that of others. In doing so, they do not only offer new insights into the rhetorical strategies and literary techniques used to construct a gendered ‘I’ in ancient literature. They also address the form and function of first-person discourse in classical literature in general, touching on fields of research that have increasingly come into focus in recent years, such as authorship studies, studies concerning the ancient notion(s) of the literary persona, as well as a historical narratology that discusses concepts such as the narrator or the literary character in ancient literary theory and practice.

Author: Deborah Kellaway
Publisher: Virago
ISBN: 9780349008653
Category : Gardening
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
From diggers and weeders, to artists and colourists, writers and dreamers to trend-setters, plantswomen to landscape designers, women have contributed to the world of gardening and gardens. Here Deborah Kellaway, author of The Making of an English Country Garden and Favourite Flowers , has collected extracts from the 18th century to the present day, to create a book that is replete with anecdotes and good-humoured advice. Colette, Margery Fish, Germaine Greer, Eleanor Sinclair Rohde, Vita Sackville-West, Rosemary Verey, Edith Wharton and Dorothy Wordsworth are some of the writers represented in this book.

Author: Christine Meek
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
The fourth volume in the series [Fragility of her sex? (1997); Women in renaissance and early modern Europe (2000); Studies in medieval and early modern women: pawns or players? (2003)] by established and younger scholars covers a wide time-span and geographical area, ranging from examinations of individual women in their medieval context to those involved in revolutionary Europe.

Author: Felice Lifshitz
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000864057
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
This collection brings together twelve essays published between 1988 and 2014, two of which are here translated into English from (respectively) their original French or German. All the essays use gender as the main category of analysis, whether of late ancient or early medieval texts or of modern medievalist films. The historical studies of medieval Europe emphasize the use of manuscript-level evidence, that is, actual sources from the period in question; arguably, this approach provides a more accurate understanding of the period than does work done on the basis of printed and edited sources. Furthermore, many of the manuscript-based essays specifically exploit liturgical or liturgy-adjacent materials; this is an area of research and a type of manuscript that has rarely been approached through a gendered lens. Meanwhile, the cinematic medievalism essays focus on the processes of remediation and adaptation, searching specifically for points at which filmmaking teams diverged from their sources as evidence for the main goals of the films (while also attending to production contexts and to reception). The juxtaposition in a single collection of scholarship on medieval manuscripts and modern movies illustrates how period specialists can contribute to conversations in the field of (historical) film studies. The book will be of interest to historians of women, gender, Christian liturgy, medieval Europe, medievalism, and historical film. (CS 1110).

Author: Regina Stefaniak
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004165444
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 181

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Book Description
Drawing on the fifteenth century theology of Saint Joseph, classical visual sources, Ficinoa (TM)s commentary on the "Phaedrus" and "Symposium," and Dantea (TM)s "rime petrose," this book interprets Michelangeloa (TM)s Tondo Doni as a model of Ephesiansa (TM) a ~great sacramenta (TM) of marriage for the new Florentine republic.

Author: Margaret L. King
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226436160
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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Book Description
In this informative and lively volume, Margaret L. King synthesizes a large body of literature on the condition of western European women in the Renaissance centuries (1350-1650), crafting a much-needed and unified overview of women's experience in Renaissance society. Utilizing the perspectives of social, church, and intellectual history, King looks at women of all classes, in both usual and unusual settings. She first describes the familial roles filled by most women of the day—as mothers, daughters, wives, widows, and workers. She turns then to that significant fraction of women in, and acted upon, by the church: nuns, uncloistered holy women, saints, heretics, reformers,and witches, devoting special attention to the social and economic independence monastic life afforded them. The lives of exceptional women, those warriors, queens, patronesses, scholars, and visionaries who found some other place in society for their energies and strivings, are explored, with consideration given to the works and writings of those first protesting female subordination: the French Christine de Pizan, the Italian Modesta da Pozzo, the English Mary Astell. Of interest to students of European history and women's studies, King's volume will also appeal to general readers seeking an informative, engaging entrance into the Renaissance period.

Author: R. Howard Bloch
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226059901
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
Until now the advent of Western romantic love has been seen as a liberation from—or antidote to—ten centuries of misogyny. In this major contribution to gender studies, R. Howard Bloch demonstrates how similar the ubiquitous antifeminism of medieval times and the romantic idealization of woman actually are. Through analyses of a broad range of patristic and medieval texts, Bloch explores the Christian construction of gender in which the flesh is feminized, the feminine is aestheticized, and aesthetics are condemned in theological terms. Tracing the underlying theme of virginity from the Church Fathers to the courtly poets, Bloch establishes the continuity between early Christian antifeminism and the idealization of woman that emerged in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In conclusion he explains the likely social, economic, and legal causes for the seeming inversion of the terms of misogyny into those of an idealizing tradition of love that exists alongside its earlier avatar until the current era. This startling study will be of great value to students of medieval literature as well as to historians of culture and gender.

Author: Jonathan A. Allan
Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.
ISBN: 1786990377
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
Virginity is of concern here, that is its utter messiness. At once valuable and detrimental, normative and deviant, undesirable and enviable. Virginity and its loss hold tremendous cultural significance. For many, female virginity is still a universally accepted condition, something that is somehow bound to the hymen, whereas male virginity is almost as elusive as the G-spot: we know it's there, it’s just we have a harder time finding it. Of course boys are virgins, queers are virgins, some people reclaim their virginities, and others reject virginity from the get go. So what if we agree to forget the hymen all together? Might we start to see the instability of terms like untouched, pure, or innocent? Might we question the act of sex, the very notion of relational sexuality? After all, for many people it is the sexual acts they don’t do, or don’t want to do, that carry the most abundant emotional clout. Virgin Envy is a collection of essays that look past the vestal virgins and beyond Joan of Arc. From medieval to present-day literature, the output of HBO, Bollywood, and the films of Abdellah Taïa or Derek Jarman to the virginity testing of politically active women in Tahrir Square, the writers here explore the concept of virginity in today’s world to show that ultimately virginity is a site around which our most basic beliefs about sexuality are confronted, and from which we can come to understand some of our most basic anxieties, paranoias, fears, and desires.

Author: Sonali Deraniyagala
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
ISBN: 0771025386
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 146

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Book Description
A brave, intimate, beautifully crafted memoir by a survivor of the tsunami that struck the Sri Lankan coast in 2004 and took her entire family. On December 26, Boxing Day, Sonali Deraniyagala, her English husband, her parents, her two young sons, and a close friend were ending Christmas vacation at the seaside resort of Yala on the south coast of Sri Lanka when a wave suddenly overtook them. She was only to learn later that this was a tsunami that devastated coastlines through Southeast Asia. When the water began to encroach closer to their hotel, they began to run, but in an instant, water engulfed them, Sonali was separated from her family, and all was lost. Sonali Deraniyagala has written an extraordinarily honest, utterly engrossing account of the surreal tragedy of a devastating event that all at once ended her life as she knew it and her journey since in search of understanding and redemption. It is also a remarkable portrait of a young family's life and what came before, with all the small moments and larger dreams that suddenly and irrevocably ended.